Wild Like the Wind (Page 33)

“You bet your ass it was,” he agreed angrily.

“Please, Hound, please let me get out what I need to say.”

He clamped his mouth shut.

“I know that . . . I know that . . .” She cleared her throat. “I know that the man you are, that was out of line. Unacceptable. I know that. I know that with what . . . uh, we have, that was also out of line.”

When he opened his mouth to speak, she hurried on.

“But you always watch me drive away. Always. This morning, it was morning. Not when I usually leave. And it was just weird that you, I mean, a biker doesn’t keep a schedule. Chaos boys don’t do that kind of thing especially. They do what they do. They are where they are. So you never . . .” She stopped and started again. “After eight every night, like a schedule. It was strange. And then you didn’t . . . well, you don’t mind me going. You’ve never asked me to spend the night. It’s okay that I go and a lot of the time it’s you that reminds me it’s time I go, and I just . . . got it in my head . . .”

She shook that head, took a deep breath and then kept going.

“We agreed that there was no one else and I got it in my head you were not honoring that and I acted on it and invaded your privacy with Jean and I’m sorry, Hound. I’m really sorry. It was out of line, I was rude in Jean’s home, and just . . . please, honey, I’m really, really sorry.”

“You think I’d ever do that shit to you?”

“No,” she said softly.

“This morning you thought I was doin’ that shit to you,” he reminded her.

“I was wrong this morning,” she replied. “I just was . . . you watch me drive away, Hound. And what we have, it’s intense, and you don’t mind me leaving in the middle of the night?” She shook her head. “I just got twisted up. I didn’t know you were looking after your elderly neighbor. How could I know that?”

He had to give her that.

But he also had to underline that point.

“I would never do that to you, Keely.”

“I know,” she whispered.

He stared in her eyes.

She now knew.

So he let that go.

“How’d you know I was in that apartment? Did you sneak up after me?” he asked.

“No.” She shook her head. “You didn’t watch me drive away so I didn’t pull out. I watched you go into the building. You started running like you were in a hurry. I did think about it, Hound. I really did. Then I . . . well, came to the wrong conclusion, turned the car off, came back in and went to your door. I was going to have it out with you here but you have a deep voice. It carries, and I heard you through the walls. I couldn’t hear what you said but I also heard Jean, just barely, but I knew it was a woman and I . . . well, I guess I flew off the handle.”

“You did that,” he agreed.

They stared at each other.

She had on her killer suede jacket with a big scarf draped around her throat that had fringe and was the pattern of a blanket. She also had in long earrings made of beads, a tee on under her jacket and scarf and he could see she had a tangle of long necklaces over that. A kickass belt in the loops of faded jeans that were frayed in different places across both thighs. And she was wearing on her feet what she wore a lot, her beat-up cowboy boots that were light brown and had a lot of stitching on them, some of it in ivory.

Her hair was in sheets down either side of her face, tangled with her scarf, her earrings and feathery over the suede.

He’d had her every night but one for two months and he’d known her for twenty years, and he’d never gotten used to her brand of beauty.

He could tell she was what she said she was. Sorry. It was written in her face, the line of her body.

She was also all he ever wanted and everything he could never have, standing in his dumpy apartment among thousands of dollars of kickass furniture that he bought but she picked.

He gentled his voice when he asked, “Do we need to end this, Keely?”

“No!” she cried, making a move like she was going to burst from her space and launch herself into his before she stopped herself.

Hound’s body locked solid as she lifted both hands and pressed them down in front of her once, dropping her eyes to the floor for a beat before she lifted them to him again.

“No,” she said quieter, calmer. “I . . . that won’t happen again, Hound. I swear.”

He loved her initial reaction. He shouldn’t, it troubled him, but he still did.

But the fuck of it was it was looking like it was going to have to be him that looked after the both of them.

Like always.

“Seems to me we’re both gettin’ in over our heads, babe,” he pointed out.

“What we have is good.”

“What we have is good cooking, good company and good sex and we can’t let it get beyond that.”

He felt his chin go into his neck as he watched the flinch hit her face at his words.

A flinch that hit him like a stone in his gut.

A big one.

“Babe?” he called.

“You’re more than that to me,” she whispered.

He liked that.

But he already knew it and it didn’t change shit.

Because it would never be enough.

“You’re more than that to me too,” he returned. “But that still doesn’t mean that isn’t all we got.”

“I want more.”

“Keely, I’m asking you to look out for you, but I’m asking you to look out for me too.”

That got him her look like he’d slapped her face.

That he did not get.

So he growled, “What’s on your mind?”

“Do you want this to be over?” she asked back.

“Fuck no.”

“Then why does it sound like you’re ending it?”

“Because I’m looking out for you,” he explained shortly, and the short part of it was that he didn’t feel it needed explaining.

“And how is it looking out for me when I don’t want it to end?” she rapped out.

“I look after Jean. I mean I look after her . . . totally. I help her hit the pisser. I help her shower. I cook for her. I get her groceries in for her. I pay her rent and for the cleaner that comes once a week, even though her house doesn’t need it but she needs the company. The trust she’s got in me built up over nine years of knowin’ her and that’s where we’re at.”

“The real reason you won’t move,” she murmured.

He nodded at her once and kept talking.

“And the only ones who know I got Jean are you, because of this morning, and Tyra and Tack, but I only told them recently. Though I should have told them before just to make sure someone knew she needed looking after.”

She nodded at that when he stopped.

So he started again.

“What I’m sayin’ is, you’re right. I got a life that I go where I go and no one’s the wiser that I come home a lot to look after Jean. What they’re gonna be the wiser about is the fact that I don’t go back to the Compound at night to throw a few back or I don’t hit the pool tables or a biker groupie when they’re hangin’ around. I haven’t been around much for two months, not because a’ Jean. Because a’ you. Now, Dutch or Jag put that together with their mom gone at night, every night, what do you think is gonna happen?”

“They don’t come around at night.”